Medieval Art in England SAM FOGG Medieval Art in England SAM FOGG 27 June – 26 July, 2019 Contents Introduction 5 Metalwork 6 1 Nielloed silver disc brooch with intertwined serpents in openwork roundels 7 2 Nielloed silver openwork disc brooch with scalloped edging 9 3 A cruciform book mount engraved with segmented interlace 11 4 Aestel 13 5 A bronze corpus 15 6 Staff finial with seated figure 17 7 & 8 Two gilt silver drinking vessels with engraved beasts 19 9 Gilt-bronze corpus showing Christ Triumphant 23 10 The Chetwynd Plate 25 11 Four-handled mortar with applied lettering 27 12 Two-handled mortar with grapevine decoration and banded ridges 29 Stone sculpture 30 13 Long shaft section from Crowland Abbey 31 14 A kneeling man gargoyle from the Lady Chapel of York Minster 34 15 A grotesque cephalic label stop 36 16 A grimacing stone head 37 17 Gargoyle with open mouth and large appendage 38 18 Grotesque head of a woman wearing a caul 40 19 Principal transom head from Canterbury Cathedral 42 20 Two corbels with faces 45 Alabaster 46 21 The Trinity 47 22 Saint Ambrose 49 23 The Annunciation 50 24 Head of Saint John the Baptist 52 25 Saint James the Great 54 Wood sculpture 56 26 Carved tracery sections from the choir stalls of Gloucester Cathedral 57 27 God the Father 60 28 A roof angel holding a chalice 61 29 A roof boss with the eagle of Saint John 64 30 ‘Poppy head’ pew end with a winged griffin 66 31 Pew end with ‘poppy-head’ finial and seated beast 69 32 Pew end with a rampant hare and inscriptions 70 33 Traceried Pew Ends 71 Stained glass 74 34 Armorial shield with the arms of de Vere, Earls of Oxford 75 35 Angel on a blue ground 76 36 Three Marys at the tomb 77 37 Composite panel with the head of Christ 78 38 Composite panel with the torso of an archangel 79 39 A pair of tracery lights with Saints Lawrence and Stephen 80 40 Armorial shield perhaps with the arms of the Horne Family of Essex 82 41 Composite panel with the Virgin Annunciate 84 42 A lancet panel showing a ministering angel 86 43 An oval composite panel of quaries painted with Yorkist symbols 87 44 Bust of an angel holding a scourge 88 45 Roundel showing a woman harvesting hay 90 46 A crowned heraldic escutcheon with the arms of Henry Manners 92 47 Edward the Confessor 95 Manuscripts and miniatures 96 48 A leaf from the Hungerford Hours 97 49 Bible, with Prologues and Interpretation of Hebrew names 99 50 Beauchamp-Corbet Hours 101 51 The missing volume of the Tavistock Breviary 103 52 The Benfield Hours 106 53 The Rugby Missal 109 54 The Spicer Hours 111 55 Lewis of Caerleon, Collected Scientific Works 114 56 Nicholas Hilliard, a portrait of a young lady with a high standing ruff 117 Textiles 119 57 A panel of opus anglicanum depicting Saints Barbara and Paul 120 58 Two opus anglicanum orphrey panels with the Crucifixion & standing saints 122 59 Red velvet cope with opus anglicanum embroideries 124 Ceramics 126 60 Globular jug with incised decoration 127 61 Rounded jug with dipped glaze 128 62 Baluster jug with a thumbed base 130 63 A Tudor green face jug 131 64 An alphabet tile 132 65 Seven tiles from Glazeley 134 66 Three tiles forming a lion 136 Colophon 138 rom grand cathedral to parish church, and from castle to cottage, medieval England was filled with imagery. Yet only a tiny proportion Fof what was made has come down to us. Ravaged by war, iconoclasm, religious reforms, neglect and the vicissitudes of fashion, a number of England’s medieval buildings may still be standing, but they have been all but gutted of their original artistic splendour. During the centuries since their destruction or the dispersal of their contents, many works of art once housed in churches and cathedrals up and down the country made their way into private hands, isolated fragments of what was once a rich, polychromatic abundance of visual and material stimulus. Stimulus to pray, exalt, celebrate, commemorate, and engage in private and communal rituals that glued society to common beliefs. The works of art in this exhibition have taken almost twenty years to bring together, and are arranged over the following pages according to eight key categories of object: metalwork; architectural stonework; Midlands alabasters; wood sculpture and liturgical furnishings; stained glass; illuminated manuscripts and miniatures; textiles; and ceramics. They are all miraculous accidents of survival that somehow escaped the many waves of destruction punctuating the last half millennium. Some may have been too hard to destroy, such as liturgical furnishings and large-scale stonework, some perhaps less provocative to reformists and iconoclasts, including ceramics or private books of hours, and still others were presumably just overlooked or inaccessible in the fury of the moment, such as small stained-glass panels placed high up in church windows, or garments of opus anglicanum locked away in chests and vestries. Some of these survivals nevertheless bear the marks of attack and attempts at erasure. For instance, the large alabaster sculpture of the Trinity (cat. 21) and the oak pew end with a griffin cat.( 30) in this catalogue were singled out by iconoclasts and violently defaced. Even so, the works of art brought together here and in the accompanying exhibition evoke the incredible panoply of English craftsmanship from a period of history spanning almost a thousand years: from wearable objects of status and power made by the country’s early Anglo-Saxon communities (cats. 1–2), to depictions of Heaven’s host of angels and the omnipotent power of God (cat. 28); from stout, bulbous jugs which would have occupied the centre of a dining table and borne witness to its theatre (cats. 60–64), to meticulously-embroidered textiles that formed dramatic focal points for liturgical celebrations (cats. 57–59). All of these objects tell the story of England’s complex history of ascendancy and decline, a country whose populations changed dramatically through war, plague and invasion, and whose artistic community embraced immigrants and indigenous craftsmen alike. England in the Middle Ages may have been a country in flux, but the art it produced continues to endure. Matthew Reeves 5 Metalwork 6 1 Nielloed silver disc brooch with intertwined serpents in openwork roundels England 6.1 cm diameter; silver with niello inlay c.800–850 Condition Provenance Minor losses to the perimeter details. One John Hewett (1919–1994), acquired repaired break. 1960s–1980s, and by descent A circular disc brooch of exceptional quality, finely worked in the form Literature: of a cross with expanded arms in silver with niello inlay, with interlaced D. Wilson, R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, R. I. Page, Anglo-Saxon serpents decorating the body of the cross and in openwork roundels Ornamental Metalwork in the British Museum, (London, 1964) between each of its four arms. The narrow outer border of the cross R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archeology: turns into the interlace of the openwork roundels, achieving a flowing Sutton Hoo and Other Discoveries (London, 1974), especially movement between the main body of the cross and the openwork. chapter 15; ‘Late Saxon Disc-Brooches’ This precious silver brooch would have been worn on the outer L. Webster and J. Backhouse eds, The Making of England: garments of a rich landowner or local official as a mark of status, and Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600–900, (London, 1991) for decorative rather than functional effect. Its formula of zoomorphic An unpublished study on the present brooch was undertaken interlace within a crisp geometric design would have made it the height by Jeremy Griffiths, St John’s College Oxford, in May 1993. of fashion in the first half of the ninth century. Close parallels can be L. Webster, ‘Metalwork of the Mercian Supremacy’, in M. P. drawn to the hoard of five brooches discovered during the digging of a Brown and C. A. Farr eds, Mercia, an Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in grave at Pentney Church in Norfolk in 1978, and believed to have been Europe, (Leicester, 2001), pp. 263–77 buried there in around 840 (fig. 1). Its design also compares well to an L. Webster, Anglo-Saxon Art, (London, 2012) early ninth-century brooch from the recently discovered Galloway hoard, unearthed in 2014 (fig. 2). Comparisons to other finds in England suggest an English origin in the early- to mid-ninth century, though it is difficult to localise its genesis more specifically than this. Nevertheless, the smooth chasing of its openwork details, the harmonious symmetry of its nielloed interlace decoration, and the balance of positive and negative space in its overall design mark it out as a masterpiece from the golden age of Anglo-Saxon jewellery. 7 Celtic Head Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Brooch from the Pentney hoard Nielloed silver disc brooch England from the Galloway hoard c. 825–850 c. 800–850 8.5 cm diameter; nielloed silver nielloed silver with textile London, British Museum, encrustation Inv. 1980,1008.4 Edinburgh, National Museum of Scotland 8 2 Nielloed silver openwork disc brooch with scalloped edging England 6.5 cm diameter; silver with niello inlay c.800–850 Condition Provenance A missing section to one quadrant and losses John Hewett (1919–1994), acquired to areas of the niello. 1960s–1980s, and by descent A disc brooch of sheet silver, finely worked, pierced, and inlaid with Literature: niello ornament. Within a scalloped rim, the main decorative field J.